[Kdenlive-devel] Reinhard will be happy...

[Jason Wood]

On Sunday 24 Aug 2003 10:17 pm, Reinhard Amersberger wrote:
> Hi Jason,
>
> i still haven't received an answer if a timeline cursor is really
> necessary, right? Or have I miss it someway?

Sorry, I thought I had replied but checking my sent mail, your right, I 
didn't. I'll answer now.

> > timeline you would be able to position via the keyboard where the next
> > clip should go - with it automatically moving to the end of a clip that
> > has just been added.
> >
> > So it's possible, stick it on the wishlist on the sourceforge project
> > page so I don't forget ;-)
>
> Hhhmmm ... yes, I can do this, but ... is there really a need for this
> keyboard cursor?
>
> Because I think you would need to have another viewer window that show
> the frame at the actual keyboard cursors position ... Also you would need
> to have specific shortcuts to move the keyboard cursor around ...

You would need shortcuts to move the keyboard cursor, but you would not need a 
separate video window to show the position of the cursor - that is not what 
it would be there for.

The idea is simply to allow you to select both a) which track you want the 
next clip to go and b) where in the track the clip should go. As well as 
allowing you to directly insert a clip from the clip monitor, it would also 
allow you to e.g. paste a clip that has been copied from somewhere else.

The way I was thinking about it, the cursor would basically move similar to a 
cursor in a wordprocessor, where each character is a frame, and each word is 
a clip. If you wanted to see where the cursor currently is, well you would 
move the seek position to be at the same place and look at it via the 
workspace monitor.

> But what about the things that are already there? I mean the In points,
> Out points and the time slider of the timeline.
>
> I think maybe you just need to offer a way to specify one (or some)
> active track(s) and the kind of how to insert the source?!?
>
> Just some examples:
> Assuming having in/out points in source viewer and timeline and source
> viewer is activated.
>
> Press number key "4" to do a 4-point-edit.
> this means: the marked source area, by in/out point, will be fitted
> between in/out point of timeline.
>
> Press number key "3" to do a 3-point-edit.
> this means: the source will be inserted from in point to out point of
> timeline beginning at in point of source viewer.
>
> Press number key "2" to add the source at the right side of the time
> slider and automatically move the time slider to the end of the added
> source clip.
>
> Press number key "1" to add the source at the right side of the time
> slider without moving the time slider to the end of the added source
> clip.

I see what you are saying. Hmmm, this is ok for inserting, but there are a few 
issues I see. The issue of active track is glossed over a somewhat - how do 
we choose the active track? Most likely, via some shortcut on the up/down 
cursors (no problem with that). More tricky is the issue of inserting a 
project clip - to set the in/outpoint for a project clip (a clip that 
represents the entire workspace) , you will be moving the time slider when 
you first set the in/outpoints and then again when you want to specify where 
it should go. Is this enough of a special case to say that it is not an 
issue? Perhaps.

ok they are minor things, but the biggest issue is : how would we select 
clips, resize clips, etc. via the keyboard with this method, where does it 
fit in? After all, after you finish your rough cut of your project, it's onto 
lot's of tweaking, shaving off a couple of frames here, moving a couple of 
clips around there, etc. :-)

Cheers,
Jason

-- 
Jason Wood
Homepage : www.uchian.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk